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William Saletan takes on the “abortion is genocide” campaign, pointing out that guns are really killing a lot of African-Americans, but the “pro-life” movement doesn’t seem too concerned — in fact, they’re unapologetically pro-gun.

The numbers are provocative. But there’s something odd about the billboards. The child who appears beside the text is fully born. Abortion doesn’t kill such children. What kills them, all too often, is shooting. If you wanted to save living, breathing, fully born children from a tool of extermination that is literally targeting blacks, the first problem you would focus on is guns. They are killing the present, not just the future. But the sponsors of the “endangered species” ads don’t support gun control. They oppose it.

Two months ago, the Violence Policy Center issued an analysis of black homicide rates based on the latest FBI data. The national U.S. homicide rate is 5.3 per 100,000 people. Among whites, it’s 3.1 per 100,000. Among blacks, it’s 20.9 per 100,000. That’s four times the national rate and seven times the white rate. In 82 percent of black-victim homicides in which the fatal weapon can be identified, it’s a gun. And 73 percent of those gun deaths are inflicted by handguns.

The report calculates that in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, blacks were 13 percent of the U.S. population but suffered 49 percent of all deaths by homicide. And the problem has been getting worse: From 2002 to 2007, the number of young black males killed by guns increased by more than 50 percent.

Maybe that’s why blacks, unlike whites, strongly favor gun control. In a Pew poll taken last year, whites said by a plurality of 50 percent to 44 percent that it was more important to protect the right to own guns than to control gun ownership. But an overwhelming majority of blacks, 72 percent to 20 percent, said it was more important to control gun ownership.

Saletan highlights the hypocrisy of anti-choicers raising a stink about race, when gun fanatics have pretty solid Klan roots — or, as he so beautifully phrases it, “People who live in glass hoods shouldn’t throw stones.” Indeed.

Last month, Renee wrote about the “Black children are an endangered species” billboards. Now the New York Times has picked it up, in a story about how the anti-abortion movement is using race and accusations of genocide as a way to “court” supporters of color to a traditionally white, long-racist movement. The anti-choice strategy has been to hire a handful of women of color to travel around the country telling African-Americans that abortion is part of a decades-old conspiracy to kill off black people.

The tactic seems to be working, at least to a point. And it works in large part because there is a long history of trying to curtail the reproductive capacities of men and women of color. The term “black genocide conspiracy” might be met with a lot of eye-rolling from white people, but there is a legitimate back-story that enables such a theory to take hold and to grow, and there are legitimate concerns about population control and the targeting of families of color. Tuskegee. Puerto Rico. Mississippi appendectomies. Women’s bodies were used as vessels to increase the slave population, and enslaved women had no legal right to their own children. After slavery, the reproductive coercion flipped, and people of color in the United States (or people wanting or forced to come to the United States) faced anti-miscegenation laws, anti-immigrant policies, mandatory sterilization and the wide embrace of eugenics. Through the 20th century and into the 21st, the bodies and reproductive capacities of women of color were used as political warning signs — Reagan’s welfare queen, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” and on and on.

And it’s not all “history,” either. Louisiana, last year. Criminal courts today. Women are paid to be sterilized, or otherwise coerced out of reproducing if they’re the wrong color or the wrong socioeconomic class, or if they’re addicted, or if they’re disabled.

All women face attempted infringements on their reproductive rights. But women of color in the United States have faced those infringements in a very particular way, and that’s in part why the “abortion is genocide” argument resonates.

But of course, the curtailing of reproductive rights and options for women of color (and for all women) is another piece of a long history of not allowing women to make the best reproductive choices for themselves. As Pamela points out in a really great take-down of the abortion-is-genocide argument, women of color in the United States are sorely under-served when it comes to reproductive health care (and health care generally), and it’s literally killing them. From her article:

-Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with cervical cancer at a later stage and are more likely to die of cervical cancer.

-Black people make up 13 percent of the population in the United States yet account for more than 49 percent of AIDS cases. AIDS is the leading cause of death for Black women between the ages 25 to 34, and the second leading cause of death for Black men between the ages 35 to 44.

-Black and Hispanic women have the highest teen pregnancy rates.

-Forty percent of Black Americans report being uninsured at some point from 2007 through 2008.

-Black women continue to die from breast cancer at alarming rates and a recent study found that half of Black teenage women reported having had one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases.

The anti-choice solution is to shut down Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides healthcare to under-served and low-income communities, and to try to outlaw abortion and even birth control. Only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services are abortion-related; the vast majority of what the organization provides involves pre-natal care, STI screening, sexual health information, gynecological care, birth control prescriptions, even flu shots. When you shut down Planned Parenthood, you aren’t ending abortion — you’re cutting off access to some of the most in-need women and men. But the anti-choice logic is that no women (and especially no women of color) should be allowed to make their own choices when it comes to their reproductive lives. Oh and also that black women are perpetuating genocide by terminating pregnancies.

That logic doesn’t just apply to abortion. Anti-choicers are also trying to cut off access to contraception, so that women won’t even be able to avoid unintended pregnancy. Programs that pay low-income and drug-addicted women to be sterilized? Funded and run by anti-choice, “pro-family” Republicans. Some of the biggest voices in the anti-choice movement still go around saying that Chinese people eat babies, for Pete’s sake. “Pro-life” Republicans oppose health care reform that would help women and babies; they oppose funding organizations that provide reproductive health care; they regularly oppose funding for pre-natal and well-baby care, for day care, and for aid to families with dependent children. In a nutshell, “pro-life” organizations oppose the things that prevent abortion, and then oppose the things that would make it easier for women to choose to give birth, and then oppose things that improve the lives of mothers, families and children.

But they would like to outlaw abortion and legally compel you to carry pregnancies to term.

Miriam notes that no one needs that kind of condescending “help,” and that the divide-and-conquer strategy to curtail women’s rights is not going to work. Women of color have long worked for reproductive justice — whether that’s securing abortion rights or pushing back against environmentalist population control arguments or fighting against welfare reform. To suggest that abortion rights are genocidal and that women of color are either sitting idly back or killing their own children erases all the work that women have done to secure rights for themselves.

What women — all women — actually need is access to reproductive health care and education (and go read that link, it’s a phenomenal piece). The fact that women of color have significantly higher abortion rates than white women should give us pause; so should the fact that the United States has a much higher abortion rate than countries in Western Europe where the procedure is widely accessible. Abortion isn’t shameful, but it is something that most women would like to avoid. The crucial piece to a low abortion rate, world-wide, is access to contraception. It also doesn’t hurt to have universal health care and family-friendly policies that enable women to bear and raise children without facing poverty, job loss or total life upheaval.

There are long-standing systematic blockades in the way of women in the United States accessing a full range of reproductive rights. Women who fall outside of the white/heterosexual/cisgender/able-bodied/middle-or-upper-class identity face even taller barriers to access. Eliminating those barriers, though, takes work. It takes dedication to women’s health and women’s lives. And dedication to women’s lives? Is not something that anti-choice organizations do.

You know, if they were really pro-life, they would also criminalize masturbation and menstruation. Every sperm is sacred! Every egg is a potential baby!

Snark aside, I do think it’s interesting that anti-choicers will put significant effort into a bill like this and into, say, prosecuting women who use drugs while pregnant, but they do absolutely nothing about the fact that enormous numbers of fertilized eggs — unique, individual lives, they argue — naturally fail to implant and are flushed out of a woman’s body. When I bring this up with anti-choice people, they always point to the causation factor — abortion is bad because a woman takes steps to end a pregnancy. It’s the difference between murder and natural death. Prosecuting women who used drugs while pregnant and gave birth to stillborns is acceptable because the woman did something which may have ended the baby’s life (that’s scientifically debatable, but a detour from the actual point of this post, so I’ll leave it alone for now). The Utah miscarriage law is understandable because it targets women who intended to have miscarriages.

I understand that. We do hold people more culpable for things that they do on purpose; we also hold people accountable for a lot of things that they do negligently. My question, though, isn’t with the punishment aspect, but with the activism aspect. Let’s say that we take anti-choicers on their word that they really, truly believe that a fertilized egg is a unique, individual human being, and that the death of that egg is like the death of a person. If that’s the truth, then why no activism around trying to find a cure for the close to 50 percent of fertilized eggs that naturally don’t implant, and are flushed out of the woman’s body? Sure, it’s not intentional, but if there were some disease that killed 50 percent of all five-year-olds, I’m pretty sure we’d be doing something about it, no?

I realize this is all pretty far afield from the actual Utah legislation, but it’s illustrative, I think, insofar as it demonstrates that the concern here isn’t really about fetuses or life or any of that. It’s about punishing women.

Amelia, a 27-year-old Nicaraguan woman, has a ten-year-old daughter. She also has cancer and desperately needs treatment, but is being denied care because she’s pregnant. Abortion is entirely illegal in Nicaragua, even in a case like Amelia’s where she needs a therapeutic abortion to save her life. In Amelia’s case, it’s not just abortion that is being denied — it’s treatment for the cancer as well, since such treatment could harm the fetus. Amelia might die and her ten-year-old daughter may be left without her mother because of “pro-life” orthodoxy.

Women’s groups are asking for help. Please visit RH Reality Check to see the full list of contacts – and please, send emails and spread the word.

Well this is a new level of offensive and disgusting. At an anti-choice press conference in Virginia, staged to encourage the state legislature to pull funding from Planned Parenthood, Republican state representative Bob Marshall told the audience that:

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

…I’m unsure of what else to even say.

A great ad to balance the Tim Tebow spot:

This won’t actually be airing during the Superbowl, so spread it around. Thank you, Sean James and Al Joyner, for speaking out.

Transcript and a statement by Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, are below the fold.

TRANSCRIPT:

Sean James: I’m Sean James I’m a former college and professional football player
Al Joiner: I’m Al Joyner I won the Olympic Gold medal in the Triple Jump
SJ: I love my family and I love sports.
AJ: And Superbowl weekend is a perfect time to honor both – sports and family.
SJ: There’s a lot of talk leading up to this Superbowl, about an ad focused on sports and family. The ad features a great football player, Tim Tebow, and his loving mother, discussing a difficult medical decision she made for her family.
I respect and honor Mrs Tebow’s decision.
AK: I want my daughter to live in a world where everyone’s decisions are respected.
SJ: My Mom showed me that women are strong and wise. She taught me that only women can make the best decisions about their health and their future.
AJ: My daughter will always be my little girl, but I’m proud every day as I watch her grow up to be her own person, a smart confident young woman. I trust her to take care of herself.
SJ: We’re working toward the day where every woman will be valued, where every woman’s decision about her health and her family will be respected.
AJ: We celebrate families by supporting our mothers, by supporting our daughters, by trusting women.

Statement by Cecile Richards:

“Planned Parenthood respects the ability of every woman to make important personal medical decisions for herself and her family, including the decision by Pam Tebow more than 20 years ago to carry her high-risk pregnancy to term and deliver her son Tim. The Tebows’ story is compelling, and central to it is the fact that we must respect the ability of every woman to make important medical decisions for herself and her family, after receiving counsel from medical professionals, religious leaders, family members, or others she trusts.

“The Tebow story underlines what Planned Parenthood has learned from the millions of women doctors and nurses at its health centers have cared for over nearly a century. Women take decisions about their health very seriously. They consider their doctors’ advice, they talk with their loved ones and people they trust, including religious leaders, and they carefully weigh all considerations before making the best decision for themselves and their families. This is true whether it’s a decision about their choice of contraception, specific medical treatments for illnesses like cancer, challenges related to medically complex pregnancies, or any other important health care issue they are considering.

“If Focus on the Family, the sponsor of the ad about the Tebow family, has its way, millions of women would no longer be able to make important personal medical decisions for themselves and their families when it comes to abortion. Focus on the Family’s long-stated goal is to outlaw abortion except in rare cases when the woman’s life is severely at risk. This is an extreme position, which would rob every woman of the ability to make important personal medical decisions for herself and her family.

“In addition to opposing a woman’s ability to make important medical decisions for herself, Focus on the Family also opposes commonsense comprehensive sex education and life-saving stem cell research. The agenda of this organization is far outside the mainstream of American life.

“Planned Parenthood urges all Americans to ponder the true meaning of the Tebow family’s experience — one in which a woman was presented with medical and moral considerations and made a deeply personal decision in private without government interference. That is exactly what we want every woman to be able to do when she must make important and highly personal medical decisions.”

To read the mainstream media spin in the Tim Tebow / anti-abortion ad controversy, you’d think that us Hysterical Feminists ™ were at it again, getting whipped into a censor-happy frenzy just because some lady decided to have a baby.

The issue, though, isn’t that we disagree with Pam Tebow’s choice (although it’s worth pointing out that she had a choice she now wishes to take away from other women, and that the choice she made — to continue a pregnancy after she became ill while on a mission trip in the Phillipines — isn’t actually available to most women in the Phillipines, where abortion is illegal and most procedures happen clandestinely); it isn’t that we don’t think anti-choice ads should be allowed on the air; it isn’t that we think anti-choice views should be censored. It’s that CBS has, for the past few years, regularly rejected ads from left-of-center organizations — MoveOn.org, PeTA, and the United Church of Christ. CBS was clear that it did not accept ads on contentious or controversial subjects such as, apparently, democracy, animal rights and gay rights. But an ad about abortion, from Focus on the Family — one of the most radical, right-leaning organizations out there? Apparently totally fine.

That’s why pro-choice and lefty folks were angry and calling for this ad to be pulled. I personally think those calls were not the best strategy, and that we should have focused on trying to buy our own ad, but that opportunity has passed. Even though I don’t support CBS pulling the ad, I am floored at the hypocrisy of their shifting standards. It also adds insult to injury that this ad is being aired during the Superbowl — not a “man’s event” by any real measure, but an event that is widely perceived to be All About Men. It just feels a little shameless and extra offensive to run an ad that forwards an anti-woman political position at an event where the advertising has traditionally focused on Stuff Dudes Like (beer, trucks and titties, for the most part).

I don’t begrudge Tebow using his fame to forward his political views. I don’t agree with him, but go for it. I think CBS should play the ad (I also think they should have played the ads from MoveOn and UCC). I also think that “Look, a Heisman trophy winner’s mother could have had an abortion!” is a really silly and shallow anti-abortion argument, since any set of circumstances can lead one person or another to exist or not exist. The fact that my existence wouldn’t have happened without WWII and without Australia’s old policies of not allowing certain physically disabled immigrants does not make WWII or that policy good things; the fact that Hitler’s mom didn’t have an abortion doesn’t mean that abortion should be mandatory. The fact that I have friends who would not have existed if their mothers hadn’t had earlier abortions doesn’t make abortion a universally perfect choice. The abortion debate is not, and should not be, centered around the existence of potential future Heisman trophy winners. A turn in that direction is pretty easily smacked down, so I’m not convinced that feminists are just too scared to address the ad itself.

It’s the hypocrisy that is frustrating. It’s the fact that an admittedly tame anti-choice ad is considered mainstream enough to air, but an equally tame ad promoting the basic humanity of gay people (and God’s love of gay people) is controversial. It’s the fact that abortion — a woman’s most basic right to control the number and spacing of her children, and her most basic right to not have the government interfere and legally compel her to carry a pregnancy to term — is still one of the most hot-button issues in the United States. This isn’t just politics; it’s a human rights and a bodily integrity issue. And yes, some of us are a little salty about the fact that our claim to our own bodies is often spun as immoral and controversial, while it’s just peachy for others to purport that we exist as vessels to produce future Great Men like Tim Tebow.

CBS claims it has changed its policy and now allows more controversial ad compaigns, so it would have been interesting to see if they actually stood by that had a pro-choice group wanted to buy ad space. Of course, they did just reject an ad from a gay dating website and an ad for Dante’s Inferno (because it used the phrase “Go to Hell”), so maybe we have our answer.

In all of this controversy, though, there isn’t much mention of the fact that Focus on the Family spent $3 million on this ad — how much money do you think that organization spends on actually helping women? In honor of Tim Tebow and his mother — who, lucky for her, actually had a choice — I’ll be making a donation to the National Network of Abortion Funds, a network of more than 100 local organizations that helps low-income women cover the cost of abortion. I hope you will donate too. I have a feeling that if NNAF had an extra $3 million laying around, it wouldn’t be using it to compete for ad time with Doritos.

After deliberating for 37 minutes, a jury has found Scott Roeder, the murderer of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, guilty as charged. He now faces a mandatory life sentence with consideration for parole after 25 years. The prosecution is aiming for 50 years without parole.

Dr. Tiller is still dead, and abortion providers and clinic workers are still living in fear, so it’s a little difficult for me to celebrate in a moment like this. But what I do feel is intense relief.

Consider this an open thread.

After a decade-long decline, teen pregnancy rates rose in 2006. When the teen pregnancy rate dropped in the 1990s, it was largely because of increased contraception use. With the Bush administration in power, though, Congress directed a whole lot of money towards abstinence-only education — telling kids just to keep it in their pants until marriage (because we all know how well that works as a life-long “don’t get pregnant” plan). The result? A four percent rise in teen births, and a one percent rise in abortion.

The United States also has the highest rate of teen pregnancy, birth and abortion of any industrialized, Western nation. Seven percent of all teenage girls here get pregnant.

Tonight, my tax dollars — and yours, if you’re in the United States — are paying to kill John Allen Muhammad. Maybe I’m missing it, but I haven’t seen any outrage from pro-life organizations, have you?